JJUA55093U Public International Law
I: Fundamental Questions - NOTE: THE COURSE IS CANCELLED IN THE
SPRING SEMESTER 2017

The undeniably critical role played by public international
law has been described as the “authoritative language, used
by States, international organizations, individuals and other
participants in the international legal order to interact with each
other.” This course will teach you the grammar, syntax, and logic
of that language and thereby allow you to join this increasingly
important conversation. You should take this course if you want to
understand why international law matters and states comply with it,
how this normative body is structured, what practical role legal
regulation plays in international life, and where changing
international life is likely going to lead. Most of the
institutions that define a well-developed national legal system –
that is a legislature making law, an executive enforcing laws, and
a judicature compulsorily adjudicating legal claims– are absent at
the international level. Public international law must therefore be
approached with different conceptional tools and an appropriate
analytical frame of mind. It is an essentially ‘primitive’ legal
system, necessarily lacking the institutional sophistication most
of you have painstakingly studied in your efforts to qualify as
nationally-approved lawyers. But it is nevertheless a highly
complex, rapidly growing, and increasingly important part of legal
science and political discourse. In an increasingly globally
operating legal profession, robust competencies in public
international law have become indispensable and provide a good
foundation of employment in international organisation, corporate
law, as well as large law firms.

At the completion of the course, students will obtain the
following Knowledge and have:

Learnt the difference between different theoretical approaches
to inter state relations, especially what distinguishes the
discipline of international law from other international relations
theories

Learnt the basic structural differences between international
law and municipal legal systems, including the inherent differences
in law-creation, law-enforcement, and adjudication

Learnt the basic historical evolution of modern
international law from its Westphalian origin to the present
day

Learnt to differentiate between the two dominant normative
discourses in this this evolution, that is natural law and
positivism

Learnt the basic methodology of the discipline, that is its
sources (Custom, Treaties, Principles, Decisions), its procedures
(State Formation, Consent, Coercion, Adjudication, Arbitration,
International Organisations), and its effects and aims
(Sovereignty, State Responsibility, Peace, Justice)

Students will acquire the following
Skills and be able to:

Read and interpret international treaties and judicial
decisions

Apply the tenets of international law to concrete cases and
propose solutions to complex legal problems

Distinguish legal from political or moral argumentation

Resolve competing legal claims with respect to state
jurisdiction, title to territory, legality of force,
etc.

Analyse the relative effectiveness of different legal
instruments and propose alternatives

The course will therefore equip students with the following
Competencies in order to:

Identify salient legal issues in current events

Identify the origin and relative strength of competing
rights and obligations of states

Analyse and evaluate competing models of the origin of
international law

Explain the basic institutional structure of international
life, that is the interplay of different legal instruments,
international organisations, and institutions

Analyse and evaluate the role of power in the creation and
maintenance of the international legal order.

The textbook for this class is Malcolm Shaw, International
Law, 7th ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Students are very strongly encouraged to purchase a hard copy prior
to the first class.

In addition, the following articles are assigned to supplement
Shaw; students are expected to have completed them prior to that
week’s session. The exam can, however, be passed with full marks
relying only on the prescribed readings in Shaw which comprise ca.
700 pages.

Ebrahim Afsah, “Contested Universalities of International Law.
Islam’s Struggle with Modernity,” Journal of the History of
International Law, Vol. 10 (2008) pp. 259-307.

David Bederman, “The Enforcement of Human Rights and Humanitarian
Law by Civil Suits in Municipal Courts. The Civil Dimension of
Universal Jurisdiction,” in: Contemporary International Law Issues:
New Forms, New Applications, ed. by Wybo P. Heere (The Hague:
American Society of International Law, 1998) pp. 156-72.

Francis A. Boyle, “Creation of the State of Palestine, The Forum:
The Algiers Declaration on Palestine,” European Journal of
International Law, Vol. 1 (1990) pp. 301-6.

Isabel Kershner, “Sweden Gives Recognition to Palestinians,” New
York Times, (30 October 2014).

Frederic L. Kirgis, Jr., “Admission of “Palestine” as a Member of a
Specialized Agency and Withholding the Payment of Assessments in
Response,” American Journal of International Law, Vol. 84, No. 1
(1990) pp. 218-30.

Yasuaki Onuma, “International Law in and with International
Politics: The Functions of International Law in International
Society,” European Journal of International Law, Vol. 14, No. 1
(2003) pp. 105-39.

“When was the Law of International Society Born? An Inquiry of the
History of International Law from an Intercivilizational
Perspective,” Journal of the History of International Law, Vol. 2,
No. 1 (July 2000) pp. 1-66.

P.-H. Teitgen, “Introduction to the European Convention on Human
Rights,” in: The European System for the Protection of Human
Rights, ed. by R. St. J. Macdonald, F. Matscher, and H. Petzold
(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1993) pp. 3-14.

This course is a
basic introduction and has therefore no formal prerequisites. As
always, a reasonable command of written and spoken English is
useful. We have in the past always had many students from beyond
the law faculty, some of whom have been among this course’s very
best graduates. I therefore explicitly encourage non-lawyers to
join.

International law is a vast
–and rapidly growing– field of scholarly endeavour and professional
engagement. Familiarising oneself with this mountain of knowledge
is a daunting task and this course aims at providing you with a
mental map of the landscape you are about to enter. The lectures
are therefore not meant to provide you with the entirety of the
substantive content of international law – something which you need
to extricate from the textbook– but to help you create linkages
between the different sub-fields of the discipline, differentiate
between established positions and minority views, and distinguish
genuinely legal from political or moral arguments. The aim is a
critical engagement with the discipline and students should
therefore be prepared to respond to questions and actively engage
in discussions. There will be no powerpoints used in
class.